being on stage and finding a way to play my emotions. The idea of being able to do that again . . . it made me feel . . . electrified.” She looked up at him, the thoughts she’d been having for weeks coalescing in a decision she was sure was the right one. “I think I want to take a leave of absence from NYU. It’s been too much, recently.”
“Why would you leave your job? You love your job.”
Emily shook her head. “I don’t anymore,” she said. “And since Tessa called last night, I can’t stop thinking about how I’m probably screwing up—missing things. And what could happen if I do. I’m absorbing so much pain, all the time. I need to set it free, not take it in.”
“You’re not making any sense,” Ezra said, his face shutting down.
“I think I need to do something else for a while,” Emily said. “To become a musician again.”
Whatever empathy Ezra had felt earlier, whatever closeness they had achieved, seemed to dissipate. “So you’re saying you do want to go on tour with this guy who wrote a song about you.”
“That’s not what I said.” Emily wanted so desperately for him to understand her. “I just want music back in my life. I want something different. I want to be different.”
“But I married a ther—” Ezra started.
“You married me, Ez, without any preconditions,” Emily said softly. “And I don’t know if I want to be a therapist anymore. I don’t know if I can handle it, especially while we’re trying to have a baby, when I’m so focused on that. I’m afraid I missed something—with Zoe’s mom. What if I miss something again? If one of my patients died because I didn’t see the signs, I don’t know if I could live with myself afterward. I know your patients don’t always make it, and you can handle it, but I don’t think I can.”
“Are you saying that I—”
“I’m not saying anything about you, Ezra. I’m talking about me,” Emily said. “And . . . I want music in my life again. I want to be on stage and share—”
Ezra moved away from her on the couch. “It’s hard for me, too,” he said. “But I don’t give up. I stick it out. It’s the kind of sacrifice you make when you have the ability to save lives. We both have that ability, Emily. It doesn’t matter if it’s hard for us. That’s what Golds do. That’s what we do.”
Emily twisted her hair into a bun and considered her husband. “You know,” she said. “If you want to do something else, I’m not stopping you. Golds can . . . we can . . . do other things.”
“That’s not what I meant,” he said. “I meant that we’ve been given a gift, and you’re talking about throwing it away.”
“But don’t I matter, too?” Emily asked. “Doesn’t it matter how I feel? What using this gift, as you call it, is doing to me?”
He was quiet for a moment. “Who do you save,” he asked, “the one or the many?”
Emily sat, shocked into silence. He was putting everyone before her. Literally every patient’s well-being was more important than her own. How was this the man she’d vowed to spend her life with? How was this her kind, empathetic husband? The one who always took care of her? What had happened? It felt like his heart had enough compassion in it for everyone but her right now.
“You kissed him?” Ezra asked, after she went silent.
She’d said it already. He was going to make her say it again. “I did, for a moment, but then I stopped. I shouldn’t have. I just . . . he’d just apologized for how he’d reacted to the miscarriage we had in college and I was crying and he was there and you’d gone and . . . It’s not an excuse, but maybe an explanation.”
“So it’s my fault?” Ezra said to her.
“I didn’t say that,” Emily answered, sitting up on the couch.
“Yes,” he answered. “You did.”
Emily took a breath. Was he right? She had no idea at this point, her thoughts so infused with feeling it was hard to be objective, to stay logical. “I want to call NYU today and tell them that they should start looking for someone else. I’ll stay until they do. This week is fall break anyway, so—”
“I don’t think you should do that,” Ezra said, standing up.